VENTURE TO THE MOON
The Starting Line
THE STORY OF the first lunar expedition has been written so many times
that some people will doubt if there is anything fresh to be said about
it. Yet all the official reports and eyewitness accounts, the
on-the-spot recordings and broadcasts never, in my opinion, gave the
full picture.
They said a great deal about the discoveries that were made but very
little about the men who made them.
As captain of the Endeavour and thus commander of the British party, I
was able to observe a good many things you will not find in the history
books, and some though not all of them can now be told. One day, I
hope, my opposite numbers on the Goddard and the Ziolkovslci will give
their points of view. But as Commander Vandenburg is still on Mars and
Commander Krasnin is somewhere inside the orbit of Venus, it looks as
if we will have to wait a few more years for their memoirs.
Confession, it is said, is good for the soul. I shall certainly feel
much happier when I have told the true story behind the timing of the
first lunar flight, about which there has always been a good deal of
mystery.
As everyone knows, the American, Russian, and British ships were
assembled in the orbit of Space Station Three, five hundred miles above
the Earth, from components flown up by relays of freight rockets.
Though all the parts had been prefabricated, the assembly and testing
of the ships took over two years, by which time a great many people who
did not realize the complexity of the task were beginning to get
slightly impatient. They had seen dozens of photos and telecasts of
the three ships floating there in space beside Station Three,
apparently quite complete and ready to pull away from Earth at a
moment's notice. What the pictures didn't show was the careful and
tedious work still in progress as thousands of pipes, wires, motors,
and instruments were fitted and subjected to every conceivable test.
There was no definite target date for departure;
since the moon is always at approximately the same distance, you can
leave for it at almost any time you like once you are ready. It makes
practically no difference, from the point of view of fuel consumption,
if you blast off at full moon or new moon or at any time in between. We
were very careful to make no predictions about blast-off, though
everyone was always trying to get us to fix the time. So many things
can go wrong in a spaceship, and we were not going to say good-by to
Earth until we were ready down to the last detail.
I shall always remember the last commanders' conference, aboard the
space station, when we all announced that we were ready. Since it was
a co-operative venture, each party special ising in some particular
task, it had been agreed that we should all make our landings within
the same twenty-four-hour period, on the preselected site in the Mare
Imbrium. The details of the journey, however, had been left to the
individual commanders, presumably in the hope that we would not copy
each other's mistakes.
"I'll be ready," said Commander Vandenburg, "to make my first dummy
take-off at 0900 tomorrow. What about you, gentlemen? Shall we ask
Earth Control to stand by for all three of us?"
"That's O.K. by me," said Krasnin, who could never be convinced that
his American slang was twenty years out of date.
I nodded my agreement. It was true that one bank of fuel gauges was
still misbehaving, but that didn't really matter; they would be fixed
by the time the tanks were filled.
The dummy run consisted of an exact replica of a real blast-off, with
everyone carrying out the job he would do when the time came for the
genuine thing. We had practiced, of course, in mock-ups down on Earth,
but this was a perfect imitation of what would happen to us when we
finally took off for the moon. All that was missing was the roar of
the motors that would tell us that the voyage had begun.
We did six complete imitations of blast-off, took the ships to pieces
to eliminate anything that hadn't behaved perfectly, then did six more.
The Endeavour, the Goddard, and the Ziolkovsk~ were all in the same
state of serviceability. There now only remained the job of fueling
up, and we would be ready to leave.
The suspense of those last few hours is not something I would care to
go through again. The eyes of the world were upon us; departure time
had now been set, with an uncertainty of only a few hours. All the
final tests had been made, and we were convinced that our ships were as
ready as humanly possible.
It was then that I had an urgent and secret personal radio call from a
very high official indeed, and a suggestion was made which had so much
authority behind it that there was little point in pretending that it
wasn't an order. The first flight to the moon, I was reminded, was a
co-operative venture but think of the prestige if we got there first.
It need only be by a couple of hours.... I was shocked at the
suggestion, and said so. By this time Vandenburg and Krasnin were good
friends of mine, and we were all in this together. I made every excuse
I could and said that since our flight paths had already been computed
there wasn't anything that could be done about it. Each ship was
making the journey by the most economical route, to conserve fuel. If
we started together, we should arrive together within seconds.
Unfortunately, someone had thought of the answer to that. Our three
ships, fueled up and with their crews standing by, would be circling
Earth in a state of complete readiness for several hours before they
actually pulled away from their satellite orbits and headed out to the
moon. At our five-hundred-mile altitude, we took ninety-five minutes
to make one circuit of the Earth, and only once every revolution would
the moment be ripe to begin the voyage. If we could jump the gun by
one revolution, the others would have to wait that ninety-five minutes
before they could follow. And so they would land on the moon
ninety-five minutes behind us.... I won't go into the arguments, and
I'm still a little ashamed that I yielded and agreed to deceive my two
colleagues. We were in the shadow of Earth, in momentary eclipse, when
the carefully calculated moment came. Vandenburg and Krasnin, honest
fellows, thought I was going to make one more round trip with them
before we all set off together. I have seldom felt a bigger heel in my
life than when I pressed the firing key and felt the sudden thrust of
the motors as they swept me away from my mother world.
For the next ten minutes we had no time for anything but our
instruments, as we checked to see that the Endeavour was forging ahead
along her precomputed orbit. Almost at the moment that we finally
escaped from Earth and could cut the motors, we burst out of shadow
into the full blaze of the sun. There would be no more night until we
reached the moon, after five days of effortless and silent coasting
through space.
Already Space Station Three and the two other ships must be a thousand
miles behind. In eighty-five more minutes Vandenburg and Krasnin would
be back at the correct starting point and could take off after me, as
we had all planned. But they could never overcome my lead, and I hoped
they wouldn't be too mad at me when we met again on the moon.
I switched on the rear camera and looked back at the distant gleam of
the space station, just emerging from the shadow of Earth. It was some
moments before I realized that the Goddard and the Ziolkovski weren't
still floating beside it where I'd left them.... No; they were just
half a mile away, neatly matching my velocity. I stared at them in
utter disbelief for a second, before I realized that every one of us
had had the same idea.
"Why, you pair of double-crossers!" I gasped. Then I began to laugh
so much that it was several minutes before I dared call up a very
worried Earth Control and tell them that everything had gone according
to plan though in no case was it the plan that had been originally
announced.... We were all very sheepish when we radioed each other to
exchange mutual congratulations. Yet at the same time, I think
everyone was secretly pleased that it had turned out this way. For the
rest of the trip, we were never more than a few miles apart, and the
actual landing maneuvers were so well synchronised that our three
braking jets hit the moon simultaneously.
Well, almost simultaneously. I might make something of the fact that
the recorder tape shows I touched down two fifths of a second ahead of
Krasnin. But I'd better not, for Vandenburg was precisely the same
amount ahead of me.
On a quarter-of-a-million-mile trip, I think you could call that a
photo finish.... Robin Hood, F R S
We had landed early in the dawn of the long lunar day, and the slanting
shadows lay all around us, extending for miles across the plain. They
would slowly shorten as the sun rose higher in the sky, until at noon
they would almost vanish but noon was still five days away, as we
measured time on Earth, and nightfall was seven days later still. We
had almost two weeks of daylight ahead of us before the sun set and the
bluely gleaming Earth became the mistress of the sky.
There was little time for exploration during those first hectic days.
We had to unload the ships, grow accustomed to the alien conditions
surrounding us, learn to handle our electrically powered tractors and
scooters, and erect the igloos that would serve as homes, offices, and
labs until the time came to leave. At a pinch, we could live in the
spaceships, but it would be excessively uncomfortable and cramped. The
igloos were not exactly commodious, but they were luxury after five
days in space. Made of tough, flexible plastic, they were blown up
like balloons, and their interiors were then partitioned into separate
rooms. Air locks allowed access to the outer world, and a good deal of
plumbing linked to the ships' air-purification plants kept the
atmosphere breathable. Needless to say, the American igloo was the
biggest one, and had come complete with everything, including the
kitchen sink not to mention a washing machine, which we and the
Russians were always borrowing.
It was late in the "afternoon" about ten days after we had landed
before we were properly organized and could think about serious
scientific work. The first parties made nervous little forays out into
the wilderness around the base, familia rising themselves with the
territory. Of course, we already possessed minutely detailed maps and
photographs of the region in which we had landed, but it was surprising
how misleading they could sometimes be. What had been marked as a
small hill on a chart often looked like a mountain to a man toiling
along in a space suit, and apparently smooth plains were often covered
knee-deep with dust, which made progress extremely slow and tedious.
These were minor difficulties, however, and the low gravity which gave
all objects only a sixth of their terrestrial weight compensated for
much.
As the scientists began to accumulate their results and specimens, the
radio and TV circuits with Earth became busier and busier, until they
were in continuous operation. We were taking no chances; even if we
didn't get home, the knowledge we were gathering would do so.
The first of the automatic supply rockets landed two days before
sunset, precisely according to plan. We saw its braking jets flame
briefly against the stars, then blast again a few seconds before
touchdown. The actual landing was hidden from us, since for safety
reasons the dropping ground was three miles from the base. And on the
moon, three miles is well over the curve of the horizon.
When we got to the robot, it was standing slightly askew on its tripod
shock absorbers, but in perfect condition. So was everything aboard
it, from instruments to food. We carried the stores back to base in
triumph, and had a celebration that was really rather overdue. The men
had been working too hard, and could do with some relaxation.
It was quite a party; the high light, I think, was Commander Krasnin
trying to do a Cossack dance in a space suit. Then we turned our minds
to competitive sports, but found that, for obvious reasons, outdoor
activities were somewhat restricted. Games like croquet or bowls would
have been practical had we had the equipment; but cricket and football
were definitely out. In that gravity, even a football would go half a
mile if it were given a good kick and a cricket ball would never be
seen again.
Professor Trevor Williams was the first person to think of a practical
lunar sport. He was our astronomer, and also one of the youngest men
ever to be made a Fellow of the Royal Society, being only thirty when
this ultimate accolade was conferred upon him. His work on methods of
interplanetary navigation had made him world famous; less well known,
however, was his skill as a toxophilite. For two years in succession
he had been archery champion for Wales. I was not surprised,
therefore, when I discovered him shooting at a target propped up on a
pile of lunar slag.
The bow was a curious one, strung with steel control wire and shaped
from a laminated plastic bar. I wondered where Trevor had got hold of
it, then remembered that the robot freight rocket had now been
cannibalised and bits of it were appearing in all sorts of unexpected
places. The arrows, however, were the really interesting feature. To
give them stability on the airless moon, where, of course, feathers
would be useless, Trevor had managed to rifle them. There was a little
gadget on the bow that set them spinning, like bullets, when they were
fired, so that they kept on course when they left the bow.
Even with this rather makeshift equipment, it was possible to shoot a
mile if one wished to.
However, Trevor didn't want to waste arrows, which were not easy to
make; he was more interested in seeing the sort of accuracy he could
get. It was uncanny to watch the almost flat trajectory of the arrows:
they seemed to be traveling parallel with the ground. If he wasn't
careful, someone warned Trevor, his arrows might become lunar
satellites and would hit him in the back when they completed their
orbit.
The second supply rocket arrived the next day, but this time things
didn't go according to plan. It made a perfect touchdown, but
unfortunately the radar-controlled automatic pilot made one of those
mistakes that such simpleminded machines delight in doing. It spotted
the only really unclimbable hill in the neighborhood, locked its beam
onto the summit of it, and settled down there like an eagle descending
upon its mountain eerie.
Our badly needed supplies were five hundred feet above our heads, and
in a few hours night would be falling. What was to be done?
About fifteen people made the same suggestion at once, and for the next
few minutes there was a great scurrying about as we rounded up all the
nylon line on the base. Soon there was more than a thousand yards of
it coiled in neat loops at Trevor's feet while we all waited
expectantly. He tied one end to his arrow, drew the bow, and aimed it
experimentally straight toward the stars.
The arrow rose a little more than half the height of the cliff; then
the weight of the line pulled it back.
"Sorry," said Trevor.
"I just can't make it. And don't forget we'd have to send up some kind
of grapnel as well, if we want the end to stay up there."
There was much gloom for the next few minutes, as we watched the coils
of line fall slowly back from the sky. The situation was really
somewhat absurd. In our ships we had enough energy to carry us a
quarter of a million miles from the moon yet we were baffled by a puny
little cliff If we had time, we could probably find a way up to the top
from the other side of the hill, but that would mean traveling several
miles.
It would be dangerous, and might well be impossible, during the few
hours of daylight that were left.
Scientists were never baffled for long, and too many ingenious
(sometimes over ingenious minds were working on the problem for it to
remain unresolved. But this time it was a little more difficult, and
only three people got the answer simultaneously. Trevor thought it
over, then said noncommittally, "Well, it's worth trying."
The preparations took a little while, and we were all watching
anxiously as the rays of the sinking sun crept higher and higher up the
sheer cliff looming above us. Even if Trevor could get a line and
grapnel up there, I thought to myself, it would not be easy making the
ascent while encumbered with a space suit. I have no head for heights,
and was glad that several mountaineering enthusiasts had already
volunteered for the job.
At last everything was ready. The line had been carefully arranged so
that it would lift from the ground with the mini mum of hindrance. A
light grapnel had been attached to the line a few feet behind the
arrow;
we hoped that it would catch in the rocks up there and wouldn't let us
down all too literally when we put our trust in it.
This time, however, Trevor was not using a single arrow. He attached
four to the line, at two-hundred-yard intervals. And I shall never
forget that incongruous spectacle of the space-suited figure, gleaming
in the last rays of the setting sun, as it drew its bow against the
sky.
The arrow sped toward the stars, and before it had lifted more than
fifty feet Trevor was already fitting the second one to his improvised
bow. It raced after its predecessor, carrying the other end of the
long loop that was now being hoisted into space. Almost at once the
third followed, lifting its section of line and I swear that the fourth
arrow, with its section, was on the way before the first had noticeably
slackened its momentum.
Now that there was no question of a single arrow lifting the entire
length of line, it was not hard to reach the required altitude. The
first two times the grapnel fell back; then it caught firmly somewhere
up on the hidden plateau and the first volunteer began to haul himself
up the line. It was true that he weighed only about thirty pounds in
this low gravity, but it was still a long way to fall.
He didn't. The stores in the freight rocket started coming down the
cliff within the next hour, and everything essential had been lowered
before nightfall. I must confess, however, that my satisfaction was
considerably abated when one of the engineers proudly showed me the
mouth organ he had sent from Earth. Even then I felt certain that we
would all be very tired of that instrument before the long lunar night
had ended.... But that, of course, was hardly Trevor's fault. As we
walked back to the ship together, through the great pools of shadow
that were flowing swiftly over the plain, he made a proposal that, I am
sure, has puzzled thousands of people ever since the detailed maps of
the first lunar expedition were published.
After all, it does seem a little odd that a flat and lifeless plain,
broken by a single small mountain, should now be labeled on all the
charts of the moon as Sherwood Forest.
Green Fingers
I am very sorry, now that it's too late, that I never got to know
Vladimir Surov. As I remember him, he was a quiet little man who could
understand English but couldn't speak it well enough to make
conversation. Even to his colleagues, I suspect he was a bit of an
enigma. Whenever I went aboard the Ziolko~ski he would be sitting in a
corner working on his notes or peering through a microscope, a man who
clung to his privacy even in the tight and tiny world of a spaceship.
The rest of the crew did not seem to mind his aloofness; when they
spoke to him, it was clear that they regarded him with tolerant
affection, as wed as with respect. That was hardly surprising; the
work he had done developing plants and trees that could flourish far
inside the Arctic Circle had already made~ him the most famous botanist
in Russia.
The fact that the Russian expedition had taken a botanist to the moon
had caused a good deal of amusement, though it was really no odder than
the fact that there were biologists on both the British and American
ships. During the years before the first lunar landing, a good deal of
evidence had accumulated hinting that some form of vegetation might
exist on the moon, despite its airlessness and lack of water. The
president of the USSR. Academy of Science was one of the leading
proponents of this theory, and being too old to make the trip himself
had done the next best thing by sending Surov.
The complete absence of any such vegetation, living or fossil, in the
thousand or so square miles explored by our various parties was the
first big disappointment the moon had reserved for us.
Even those skeptics who were quite certain that no form of life could
exist on the moon would have been very glad to have been proved wrong
as of course they were, five years later, when Richards and Shannon
made their astonishing discovery inside the great waned plain of
Eratosthenes. But that revelation slid lay in the future; at the time
of the first landing, it seemed that Surov had come to the moon in
vain.
He did not appear unduly depressed, but kept himself as busy as the
rest of the crew studying soil samples and looking after the little
hydroponic farm whose pressurised, transparent tubes formed a gleaming
network around the Ziolkovski Neither we nor the Americans had gone in
for this sort of thing, having calculated that it was better to ship
food from Earth than to grow it on the spot at least until the time
came to set up a permanent base.
We were right in terms of economics, but wrong in terms of morale. The
tiny airtight greenhouses inside which Surov grew his vegetables and
dwarf fruit trees were an oasis upon which we often feasted our eyes
when we had grown tired of the immense desolation surrounding us.
One of the many disadvantages of being commander was that I seldom had
much chance to do any active exploring; I was too busy preparing
reports for Earth, checking stores, arranging programs and duty
rosters, conferring with my opposite numbers in the American and
Russian ships, and trying not always successfully to guess what would
go wrong next. As a result, I sometimes did not go outside the base
for two or three days at a time, and it was a standing joke that my
space suit was a haven for moths.
Perhaps it is because of this that I can remember all my trips outside
so vividly; certainly I can recall my only encounter with Surov. It
was near noon, with the sun high above the southern mountains and the
new Earth a barely visible thread of silver a few degrees away from
it.
Henderson, our geophysicist, wanted to take some magnetic readings at a
series of check points a couple of miles to the east of the base.
Everyone else was busy, and I was momentarily on top of my work, so we
set off together on foot.
The journey was not long enough to merit taking one of the scooters,
especially because the charges in the batteries were getting low. In
any case, I always enjoyed walking out in the open on the moon. It was
not merely the scenery, which even at its most awe-inspiring one can
grow accustomed to after a while. No what I never tired of was the
effortless, slow-motion way in which every step took me bounding over
the landscape, giving me the freedom that before the coming of space
flight men only knew in dreams.
We had done the job and were halfway home when I noticed a figure
moving across the plain about a mile to the south of us not far, in
fact, from the Russian base. I snapped my field glasses down inside my
helmet and took a careful look at the other explorer. Even at close
range, of course, you can't identify a man in a space suit, but because
the suits are always coded by color and number that makes no practical
difference.
"Who is it?" asked Henderson over the short-range radio channel to
which we were both tuned.
"Blue suit, Number 3 that would be Surov.
But I don't understand. He's by himself"
It is one of the most fundamental rules of lunar exploration that no
one goes anywhere alone on the surface of the moon. So many accidents
can happen, which would be trivial if you were with a companion~ ut
fatal if you were by yourself. How would you manage, for example, if
your space suit developed a slow leak in the small of the back and you
couldn't put on a repair patch? That may sound funny; but it's
happened.
"Perhaps his buddy has had an accident and he's going to fetch help,"
suggested Henderson.
"Maybe we had better call him."
I shook my head. Surov was obviously in no hurry. He had been out on
a trip of his own, and was making his leisurely way back to the
Ziolkovski. It was no concern of mine if Commander Krasnin let his
people go out on solo trips, though it seemed a deplorable practice.
And if Surov was breaking regulations, it was equally no concern of
mine to report him.
During the next two months, my men often spotted Surov making his lone
way over the landscape, but he always avoided them if they got too
near. I made some discreet inquiries, and found that Commander Krasnin
had been forced, owing to shortage of men, to relax some of his safety
rules. But I couldn't find out what Surov was up to, though I never
dreamed that his commander was equally in the dark.
It was with an "I told you so" feeling that I got Krasnin's emergency
call. We had all had men in trouble before and had had to send out
help, but this was the first time anyone had been lost and had not
replied when his ship had sent out the recall signal. There was a
hasty radio conference, a line of action was drawn up, and search
parties fanned out from each of the three ships.
Once again I was with Henderson, and it was only common sense for us to
backtrack along the route that we had seen Surov following. It was in
what we regarded as "our" territory, quite some distance away from
Surov's own ship, and as we scrambled up the low foothills it occurred
to me for the first time that the Russian might have been doing
something he wanted to keep from his colleagues.
What it might be, I could not imagine.
Henderson found him, and yelled for help over his suit radio. But it
was much too late; Surov was lying, face down, his deflated suit
crumpled around him. He had been kneeling when something had smashed
the plastic globe of his helmet; you could see how he had pitched
forward and died instantaneously.
When Commander Krasnin reached us, we were still staring at the
unbelievable object that Surov had been examining when he died. It was
about three feet high, a leathery, greenish oval rooted to the rocks
with a widespread network of tendrils.
Yes rooted, for it was a plant. A few yards away were two others, much
smaller and apparently dead, since they were blackened and withered.
My first reaction was: "So there is life on the moon, after all!" It
was not until Krasnin's voice spoke in my ears that I realised how much
more marvelous was the truth.
"Poor VladimirI" he said.
"We knew he was a genius, yet we laughed at him when he told us of his
dream. So he kept his greatest work a secret.
He conquered the Arctic with his hybrid wheat, but that was only a
beginning. He has brought life to the moon and death as well."
As I stood there, in that first moment of astonished revelation, it
still seemed a miracle.
Today, all the world knows the history of "Surov's cactus," as it was
inevitably if quite inaccurately christened, and it has lost much of
its wonder. His notes have told the full story, and have described the
years of experimentation that finally led him to a plant whose leathery
skin would enable it to survive in vacuum, and whose far-ranging,
acid-secreting roots would enable it to grow upon rocks where even
lichens would be hard put to thrive. And we have seen the realisation
of the second stage of Surov's dream, for the cactus which will forever
bear his name has already broken up vast areas of the lunar rock and so
prepared a way for the more speciali sed plants that now feed every
human being upon the moon.
Krasnin bent down beside the body of his colleague and lifted it
effortlessly against the low gravity. He fingered the shattered
fragments of the plastic helmet, and shook his head in perplexity.
"What could have happened to him?" he said.
"It almost looks as if the plant did it, but that's ridiculous."
The green enigma stood there on the no-longer barren plain, tantalising
us with its promise and its mystery. Then Henderson said slowly, as if
thinking aloud:
"I believe I've got the answer; I've just remembered some of the botany
I did at school.
If Surov designed this plant for lunar conditions, how would he arrange
for it to propagate itself?
The seeds would have to be scattered over a very wide area in the hope
of finding a few suitable places to grow. There are no birds or
animals here to carry them, in the way that happens on Earth. I can
only think of one solution and some of our terrestrial plants have
already used it."
He was interrupted by my yell. Something had hit with a resounding
clang against the metal waistband of my suit. It did no damage, but it
was so sudden and unexpected that it took me utterly by surprise.
A seed lay at my feet, about the size and shape of a plum stone. A few
yards away, we found the one that had shattered Surov's helmet as he
bent down. He must have known that the plant was ripe, but in his
eagerness to examine it he had forgotten what that implied. I have
seen a cactus throw its seed a quarter of a mile under the low lunar
gravity. Surov had been shot at point-blank range by his own
creation.
All That Glitters
This is really Commander Vandenburg's story, but he is too many
millions of miles away to tell it. It concerns his geophysicist, Dr.
Paynter, who was generally believed to have gone to the moon to get
away from his wife.
At one time or other, we were all supposed (often by our wives) to have
done just that.
However, in Paynter's case, there was just enough truth to make it
stick.
It was not that he disliked his wife; one could almost say the
contrary. He would do anything for her, but unfortunately the things
that she wanted him to do cost rather too much. She was a lady of
extravagant tastes, and such ladies are advised not to marry scientists
even scientists who go to the moon.
Mrs. Paynter's weakness was for jewelry, particularly diamonds. As
might be expected, this was a weakness that caused her husband a good
deal of worry. Being a conscientious as well as an affectionate
husband, he did not merely worry about it he did something about it. He
became one of the world's leading experts on diamonds, from the
scientific rather than the commercial point of view, and probably knew
more about their composition, origin, and properties than any other man
alive. Unfortunately, you may know a lot about diamonds without ever
possessing any, and her husband's erudition was not something that Mrs.
Paynter could wear around her neck when she went to a party.
Geophysics, as I have mentioned, was Dr.
Paynter's real business; diamonds were merely a sideline. He had
developed many remarkable surveying instruments which could probe the
interior of the Earth by means of electric impulses and magnetic waves,
so giving a kind of X-ray picture of the hidden strata far below. It
was hardly surprising, therefore, that he was one of the men chosen to
pry into the mysterious interior of the moon.
He was quite eager to go, but it seemed to Commander Vandenburg that he
was reluctant to leave Earth at this particular moment. A number of
men had shown such symptoms; sometimes they were due to fears that
could not be eradicated, and an otherwise promising man had to be left
behind.
In Paynter's case, however, the reluctance was quite impersonal. He
was in the middle of a big experiment something he had been working on
all his life and he didn't want to leave Earth until it was finished.
However, the first lunar expedition could not wait for him, so he had
to leave his project in the hands of his assistants. He was
continually exchanging cryptic radio messages with them, to the great
annoyance of the signals section of Space Station Three.
In the wonder of a new world waiting to be explored, Paynter soon
forgot his earthly preoccupations. He would dash hither and yon over
the lunar landscape on one of the neat little electric scooters the
Americans had brought with them, carrying seismographs, magnetometers,
gravity meters, and all the other esoteric tools of the geophysicist's
trade. He was trying to learn, in a few weeks, what it had taken men
hundreds of years to discover about their own planet. It was true that
he had only a small sample of the moon's fourteen million square miles
of territory to explore, but he intended to make a thorough job of
it.
From time to time he continued to get messages from his colleagues back
on Earth, as well as brief but affectionate signals from Mrs. P.
Neither seemed to interest him very much; even when you are not so busy
that you hardly have time to sleep, a quarter of a million miles puts
most of your personal affairs in a different perspective. I think that
on the moon Dr. Paynter was really happy for the first time in his
life; if so, he was not the only one.
Not far from our base there was a rather fine crater pit, a great
blowhole in the lunar surface almost two miles from rim to rim. Though
it was fairly close at hand, it was outside the normal area of our
joint operations, and we had been on the moon for six weeks before
Paynter led a party of three men off in one of the baby tractors to
have a look at it. They disappeared from radio range over the edge of
the moon, but *e weren't worried about that because if they ran into
trouble they could always call Earth and get any message relayed back
to us.
Paynter and his men were gone forty-eight hours, which is about the
maximum for continuous working on the moon, even with booster drugs. At
first their little expedition was quite uneventful and therefore quite
unexciting;
everything went according to plan. They reached the crater, inflated
their pressurised igloo and unpacked their stores, took their
instrument readings, and then set up a portable drill to get core
samples. It was while he was waiting for the drill to bring him up a
nice section of the moon that Paynter made his second great discovery.
He had made his first about ten hours before, but he didn't know it
yet.
Around the lip of the crater, lying where they had been thrown up by
the great explosions that had convulsed the lunar landscape three
hundred million years before, were immense piles of rock which must
have come from many miles down in the moon's interior. Anything he
could do with his little drill, thought Paynter, could hardly compare
with this. Unfortunately, the mountain-sized geological specimens that
lay all around him were not neatly arranged in their correct order;
they had been scattered over the landscape, much farther than the eye
could see, according to the arbitrary violence of the eruptions that
had blasted them into space.
Paynter climbed over these immense slag heaps, taking a swing at likely
samples with his little hammer. Presently his colleagues heard him
yell, and saw him come running back to them carrying what appeared to
be a lump of rather poor quality glass. It was some time before he was
sufficiently coherent to explain what all the fuss was about and some
time later still before the expedition remembered its real job and got
back to work.
Vandenburg watched the returning party as it headed back to the ship.
The four men didn't seem as tired as one would have expected,
considering the fact that they had been on their feet for two days.
Indeed, there was a certain jauntiness about their movements which even
the space suits couldn't wholly conceal. You could see that the
expedition had been a success. In that case, Paynter would have two
causes for congratulation.
The priority message that had just come from Earth was very cryptic,
but it was clear that Paynter's work there whatever it was had finally
reached a triumphant conclusion.
Commander Vandenburg almost forgot the message when he saw what Paynter
was holding in his hand. He knew what a raw diamond looked like, and
this was the second largest that anyone had ever seen. Only the
Cullinan, tipping the scales at 3,026 carats, beat it by a slender
margin.
"We ought to have expected it," he heard Paynter babble happily.
"Diamonds are always found associated with volcanic vents. But somehow
I never thought the analogy would hold here."
Vandenburg suddenly remembered the signal, and handed it over to
Paynter. He read it quickly, and his jaw dropped. Never in his life,
Vandenburg told me, had he seen a man so instantly deflated by a
message of congratulation. The signal read:
WE'VE DONE IT. TEST 541 WITH MODIFIED
PRESSURE CONTAINER COMPLETE
SUCCESS. NO PRACTICAL LIMIT TO SIZE.
COSTS NEGLIGIBLE.
"What's the matter?" said Vandenburg, when he saw the stricken look on
Paynter's face. "it doesn't seem bad news to me, whatever it means."
Paynter gulped two or three times like a stranded fish, then stared
helplessly at the great crystal that almost filled the palm of his
hand. He tossed it into the air, and it Boated back in that
slow-motion way everything has under lunar gravity.
Finally he found his voice.
"My lab's been working for years," he said, "trying to synthesise
diamonds. Yesterday this thing was worth a million dollars. Today
it's worth a couple of hundred. I'm not sure I'll bother to carry it
back to Earth."
Well, he did carry it back; it seemed a pity not to. For about three
months, Mrs. P. had the finest diamond necklace in the world, worth
every bit of a thousand dollars mostly the cost of cutting and
polishing. Then the Paynter Process went into commercial production,
and a month later she got her divorce. The grounds were extreme mental
cruelty; and I suppose you could say it was justified.
Watch This Space
It was quite a surprise to discover, when I looked it up, that the most
famous experiment we carried out while we were on the moon had its
begimungs way back in 19SS. At that time, high-altitude rocket
research had been going for only about ten years, mostly at White
Sands, New Mexico. Nineteen fifty-five was the date of one of the most
spectacular of those early experiments, one that involved the ejection
of sodium into the upper atmosphere.
On Earth, even on the clearest night, the sky between the stars isn't
completely dark. There's a very faint background glow, and part of it
is caused by the fluorescence of sodium atoms a hundred miles up. Since
it would take the sodium in a good many cubic miles of the upper
atmosphere to fill a single matchbox, it seemed to the early
investigators that they could make quite a fireworks display if they
used a rocket to dump a few pounds of the stuff into the ionosphere.
They were right. The sodium squirted out of a rocket above White Sands
early in 195S produced a great yellow glow in the sky which was
visible, like a kind of artificial moonlight, for over an hour, before
the atoms dispersed. This experiment wasn't done for fun (though it
was fun) but for a serious scientific purpose. Instruments trained on
this glow were able to gather new knowledge about the upper air
knowledge that went into the stockpile of information without which
space flight would never have been possible.
When they got to the moon, the Americans decided that it would be a
good idea to repeat the experiment there, on a much larger scale. A
few hundred kilograms of sodium fired up from the surface would produce
a display that would be visible from Earth, with a good pair of field
glasses, as it fluoresced its way up through the lunar atmosphere.
(Some people, by the way, still don't realize that the moon has an
atmosphere. It's about a million times too thin to be breathable, but
if you have the right instruments you can detect it. As a meteor
shield, it's first-rate, for though it may be tenuous it's hundreds of
miles deep.)
Everyone had been talking about the experiment for days. The sodium
bomb had arrived from Earth in the last supply rocket, and a-very
impressive piece of equipment it looked. Its operation was extremely
simple; when ignited, an incendiary charge vaporised the sodium until a
high pressure was built up, then a diaphragm burst and the stuff was
squirted up into the sky through a specially shaped nozzle. It would
be shot off soon after nightfall, and when the cloud of sodium rose out
of the moon's shadow into direct sunlight it would start to glow with
tremendous brilliance.
Nightfall, on the moon, is one of the most awe-inspiring sights in the
whole of nature, made doubly so because as you watch the sun's flaming
disk creep so slowly below the mountains you know that it will be
fourteen days before you see it again. But it does not bring darkness
at least, not on this side of the moon. There is always the Earth,
hanging motionless in the sky, the one heavenly body that neither rises
nor sets. The light pouring back from her clouds and seas floods the
lunar landscape with a soft, blue-green radiance, so that it is often
easier to find your way around at night than under the fierce glare of
the sun.
Even those who were not supposed to be on duty had come out to watch
the experiment. The sodium bomb had been placed at the middle of the
big triangle formed by the three ships, and stood upright with its
nozzles pointing at the stars. Dr.
Anderson, the astronomer of the American team, was testing the firing
circuits, but everyone else was at a respectful distance. The bomb
looked perfectly capable of living up to its name, though it was really
about as dangerous as a soda-water siphon.
All the optical equipment of the three expeditions seemed to have been
gathered together to record the performance. Telescopes,
spectroscopes, motion-picture cameras, and everything else one could
think of were lined up ready for action. And this, I knew, was nothing
compared with the battery that must be zeroed on us from Earth. Every
amateur astronomer who could see the moon tonight would be standing by
in his back garden, listening to the radio commentary that told him of
the progress of the experiment. I glanced up at the gleaming planet
that dominated the sky above me; the land areas seemed to be fairly
free from cloud, so the folks at home should have a good view. That
seemed only fair; after all, they were footing the bill.
There were still fifteen minutes to go. Not for the first time, I
wished there was a reliable way of smoking a cigarette inside a space
suit without getting the helmet so badly fogged that you couldn't see.
Our scientists had solved so many much more difficult problems; it
seemed a pity that they couldn't do something about that one.
To pass the time for this was an experiment where I had nothing to do I
switched on my suit radio and listened to Dave Bolton, who was making a
very good job of the commentary. Dave was our chief navigator, and a
brilliant mathematician. He also had a glib tongue and a picturesque
turn of speech, and sometimes his recordings had to be censored by
the
BBC.
There was nothing they could do about this one, however, for it was
going out live from the relay stations on Earth.
Dave had finished a brief and lucid explanation of the purpose of the
experiment, describing how the cloud of glowing sodium would enable us
to analyze the lunar atmosphere as it rose through it at approximately
a thousand miles an hour.
"However," he went on to tell the waiting millions on Earth, "let's
make one point clear. Even when the bomb has gone off, you won't see a
darn thing for ten minutes and neither will we. The sodium cloud will
be completely invisible while it's rising up through the darkness of
the moon's shadow.
Then, quite suddenly, it will flash into brilliance as it enters the
sun's rays, which are streaming past over our heads right now as we
stare up into space. No one is guise sure how bright it will be, but
it's a pretty safe guess that you'll be able to see it in any telescope
bigger than a two-inch. So it should just be within the range of a
good pair of binoculars."
He had to keep this sort of thing up for another ten minutes, and it
was a marvel to me how he managed to do it. Then the great moment
came, and Anderson closed the firing circuit. The bomb started to
cook, building up pressure inside as the sodium volatilised. After
thirty seconds, there was a sudden puff of smoke from the long, slender
nozzle pointing up at the sky. And then we had to wait for another ten
minutes while the invisible cloud rose to the stars. After all this
build-up, I told myself, the result had better be good.
The seconds and minutes ebbed away. Then a sudden yellow glow began to
spread across the sky, like a vast and unwavering aurora that became
brighter even as we watched. It was as if an artist was sprawling
strokes across the stars with a flame-filled brush. And as I stared at
those strokes, I suddenly realised that someone had brought off the
greatest advertising coup in history. For the strokes formed letters,
and the letters formed two words the name of a certain soft drink too
well known to need any further publicity from me.
How had it been done? The first answer was obvious. Someone had
placed a suitably cut stencil in the nozzle of the sodium bomb, so that
the stream of escaping vapor had shaped itself to the words. Since
there was nothing to distort it, the pattern had kept its shape during
its invisible ascent to the stars. I had seen skywriting on Earth, but
this was something on a far larger scale.
Whatever I thought of them, I couldn't help admiring the ingenuity of
the men who had perpetrated the scheme. The O's and A's had given them
a bit of trouble, but the C's and L's were perfect.
After the initial shock, I am glad to say that the scientific program
proceeded as planned. I wish I could remember how Dave Bolton rose to
the occasion in his commentary; it must have been a strain even for his
quick wits. By this time, of course, half the Earth could see what he
was describing. The next morning, every newspaper on the planet
carried that famous photo of the crescent moon with the luminous slogan
painted across its darkened sector.
The letters were visible, before they finally dispersed into space, for
over an hour. By that time the words were almost a thousand miles
long, and were beginning to get blurred. But they were still readable
until they at last faded from sight in the ultimate vacuum between the
planets.
Then the real fireworks began. Commander Vandenburg was absolutely
furious, and promptly started to grill all his men. However, it was
soon clear that the saboteur if you could call him that had been back
on Earth. The bomb had been prepared there and shipped ready for
immediate use. It did not take long to find, and fire, the engineer
who had carried out the substitution. He couldn't have cared less,
since his financial needs had been taken care of for a good many years
to come.
As for the experiment itself, it was completely successful from the
scientific point of view; all the recording instruments worked
perfectly as they analyzed the light from the unexpectedly shaped
cloud. But we never let the Americans live it down, and I am afraid
poor Captain Vandenburg was the one who suffered most. Before he came
to the moon he was a confirmed teetotaler, and much of his refreshment
came from a certain wasp-wasted bottle. But now, as a matter of
principle, he can only drink beer and he hates the stuff.
A Question of Residence
I have already described the shall we say jockeying for position before
take-off on the first flight to the moon. As it turned out, the
American, Russian, and British ships landed just about simultaneously.
No one has ever explained, however, why the British ship came back
nearly two weeks after the others.
Oh, I know the official story; I ought to, for I helped to concoct it.
It is true as far as it goes, but it scarcely goes far enough.
On all counts, the joint expedition had been a triumphant success.
There had been only one casualty, and in the manner of his death
Vladimir Surov had made himself immortal. We had gathered knowledge
that would keep the scientists of Earth busy for generations, and that
would revolutionise almost all our ideas concerning the nature of the
universe around us. Yes, our Sve months on the moon had been well
spent, and we could go home to such welcomes as few heroes had ever had
before.
However, there was still a good deal of tidying up to be done. The
instruments that had been scattered all over the lunar landscape were
still busily recording, and much of the information they gathered could
not be automatically radioed back to Earth. There was no point in all
three of the expeditions staying on the moon to the last minute;
the personnel of one would be sufficient to finish the job. But who
would volunteer to be caretaker while the others went back to gain the
glory? It was a difficult problem, but one that would have to be
solved very soon.
As far as supplies were concerned, we had little to worry about. The
automatic freight rockets could keep us provided with air, food, and
water for as long as we wished to stay on the moon. We were all in
good health, though a little tired. None of the anticipated
psychological troubles had cropped up, perhaps because we had all been
so busy on tasks of absorbing interest that we had had no time to worry
about going crazy. But, of course, we all looked forward to getting
back to Earth and seeing our families again.
The first change of plans was forced upon us by the Ziolkovski being
put out of commission when the ground beneath one of her landing legs
suddenly gave way. The ship managed to stay upright, but the hull was
badly twisted and the pressure cabin sprang dozens of leaks. There was
much debate about on-the-spot repairs, but it was decided that it would
be far too risky for her to take off in this condition. The Russians
had no alternative but to thumb lifts back in the Goddard and the
Endeavour; by using the Ziolkeyski's unwanted fuel, our ships would be
able to manage the extra load. However, the return flight would be
extremely cramped and uncomfortable for all concerned because everyone
would have to eat and sleep in shifts.
Either the American or the British ship, therefore, would be the first
back to Earth.
During those final weeks, as the work of the expedition was brought to
its close, relations between Commander Vandenburg and myself were
somewhat strained. I even wondered if we ought to settle the matter by
tossing for it.... Another problem was also engaging my attention that
of crew discipline. Perhaps this is too strong a phrase; I would not
like it to be thought that a mutiny ever seemed probable. But all my
men were now a little abstracted and liable to be found, if off duty,
scribbling furiously in corners. I knew exactly what was going on, for
I was involved in it myself. There wasn't a human being on the moon
who had not sold exclusive rights to some newspaper or magazine, and we
were all haunted by approaching deadlines. The radio-teletype to Earth
was in continuous operation, sending tens of thousands of words being
dictated over the speech circuits.
It was Professor Williams, our very practical-minded astronomer, who
came to me one day with the answer to my main problem.
"Skipper," he said balancing himself precariously on the
all-too-collapsible table I used as my working desk inside the igloo,
"there's no technical reason, is there, why we should get back to Earth
first?"
"No," I said, "merely a matter of fame, fortune, and seeing our
families again. But I admit those aren't technical reasons. We could
stay here another year if Earth kept sending supplies. If you want to
suggest that, however, I shall take great pleasure in strangling
you."
"It's not as bad as that. Once the main body has gone back, whichever
party is left can follow in two or three weeks at the latest. They'll
get a lot of credit, in fact, for self sacrifice modesty, and similar
virtues."
"Which will be very poor compensation for being second home."
"Right we need something else to make it worthwhile. Some more
material reward."
"Agreed. What do you suggest?"
Williams pointed to the calendar hanging on the wall in front of me,
between the two pin-ups we had stolen from the Goddard The length of
our stay was indicated by the days that had been crossed off in red
ink; a big question mark in two weeks' time showed when the first ship
would be heading back to Earth.
"There's your answer," he said.
"If we go back then, do you realize what will happen? I'll tell
you."
He did, and I kicked myself for not having thought of it first.
The next day, I explained my decision to Vandenburg and Krasnin.
"We'll stay behind and do the mopping up," I said.
"It's a matter of common sense. The Goddard's a much bigger ship than
ours and can carry an extra four people, while we can manage only two
more, and even then it will be a squeeze.
If you go first, Van, it will save a lot of people from eating their
hearts out here for longer than necessary."
"That's very big of you," replied Vandenburg.
"I
won't hide the fact that we'll be happy to get home. And it's logical,
I admit, now that the Ziolkovski's out of action. Still, it means
quite a sacrifice on your part, and I don't really like to take
advantage of it."
I gave an expansive wave.
"Think nothing of it," I answered.
"As long as you boys don't grab all the credit, we'll take our turn.
After all, we'll have the show here to ourselves when you've gone back
to Earth."
Krasnin was looking at me with a rather calculating expression, and I
found it singularly difficult to return his gaze.
"I hate to sound cynical," he said, "but I've learned to be a little
suspicious when people start doing big favors without very good
reasons. And fragilely, I don't think the reason you've given is good
enough. You wouldn't have anything else up your sleeve, would you?"
"Oh, very well," I sighed.
"Y'd hoped to get a little credit, but I see it's no use trying to
convince anyone of the purity of my motives. I've got a reason, and
you might as well know it. But please don't spread it around, I'd hate
the folks back on Earth to be disillusioned. They still think of us as
noble and heroic seekers after knowledge; let's keep it that way, for
all our sakes."
Then I pulled out the calendar, and explained to Vandenburg and Krasnin
what Williams had already explained to me. They listened with
scepticism, then with growing sympathy.
"I had no idea it was that bad," said Vandenburg at last.
"Americans never have," I said sadly.
"Anyway, that's the way it's been for half a century, and it doesn't
seem to get any better. So you agree with my suggestion?"
"Of course. It suits us fine, anyhow. Until the next expedition's
ready, the moon's all yours."
I remembered that phrase, two weeks later, as I watched the Goddard
blast up into the sky toward the distant, beckoning Earth. It was
lonely, then, when the Americans and all but two of the Russians had
gone. We envied them the reception they got, and watched jealously on
the TV screens their triumphant processions through Moscow and New
York. Then we went back to work, and bided our time. Whenever we felt
depressed, we would do little sums on bits of paper and would be
instantly restored to cheerfulness.
The red crosses marched across the calendar as the short terrestrial
days went by days that seemed to have very little connection with the
slow cycle of lunar time. At last we were ready;
all the instrument readings were taken, all the specimens and samples
safely packed away aboard the ship. The motors roared into life,
giving us for a moment the weight we would feel again when we were back
in Earth's gravity. Below us the rugged lunar landscape, which we had
grown to know so well, fell swiftly away; within seconds we could see
no sign at all of the buildings and instruments we had so laboriously
erected and which future explorers would one day use.
The homeward voyage had begun. We returned to Earth in uneventful
discomfort, joined the already half-dismantled Goddard beside Space
Station Three, and were quickly ferried down to the world we had left
seven months before.
Seven months: that, as Williams had pointed out, was the all-important
figure. We had been on the moon for more than half a financial year
and for all of us, it had been the most profitable year of our lives.
Sooner or later, I suppose, this interplanetary loophole will be
plugged; the Department of Inland Revenue is still fighting a gallant
rear-guard action, but we seem neatly covered under Section 57,
paragraph 8 of the Capital Gains Act of 1972. We wrote our books and
articles on the moon and until there's a lunar government to impose
income tax, we're hanging on to every penny.
And if the ruling finally goes against us well, there's always Mars ....